The NBA Hall of Famer was elected mayor in a special election in May 2009 to complete the remaining months of disgraced ex-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s second term.  Kilpatrick had resigned from office as part of a plea bargain agreement after being charged with perjury.

Inheriting a $300 million deficit and a reservoir of goodwill from the city’s beleaguered residents, the former Detroit Piston star was promptly re-elected to a full four-year term six months later, capturing an eye-opening 74 percent in the primary and a solid 56 percent in the general election.

Widely credited with bringing integrity back to City Hall, Bing’s tenure as mayor was a rocky one and was made even more difficult with Gov. Rick Snyder’s appointment of an Emergency Financial Manager earlier this year after a financial stability agreement with the state failed to turn things around.

The imposition of an emergency manager — some critics have called it an “austerity dictatorship”— essentially rendered the mayor and city council powerless in dealing with city’s mounting fiscal woes.

During his press conference yesterday at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, Bing ripped into state officials for not giving Detroit officials enough time to solve the financially strapped city’s problems on their own.

“Change takes time and hard work,” he told his supporters, adding that his administration had “prepared the runway” for Detroit’s eventual recovery.

Detractors of the impeccably-dressed, lightning quick and smooth-shooting former NBA player said that he waited too long into his administration to begin making the kinds of painful cuts in personnel and services necessary to ease Detroit’s immense fiscal problems. 

Bing’s supporters, however, say that the mayor was fully aware of the impending financial disaster confronting the city, but he had a big heart and was worried about the impact of those decisions on ordinary citizens.  He wasn’t a fan of austerity.  He put off the inevitable as long as he could, they say. 

The 69-year-old Bing refused to rule out the idea of mounting a future political comeback, strongly hinting that he might run for Wayne County Executive next year.

Bing’s departure from the mayoral contest leaves former Detroit Medical Center chief Mike Duggan and Wayne County Sheriff Benny Napoleon as the two leading contenders in a crowded race that includes former Detroit Corporation Counsel Krystal Crittendon and four-time mayoral candidate Tom Barrow.

State Rep. Fred Durhal, Jr., former State Rep. Lisa Howze, community activists Herman Griffin and Jean Vortkamp, and D’Artagnan M. Collier, a member of the Socialist Equality Party who’s waging his second campaign for the city’s top spot, were also among the 22 candidates who filed nominating petitions by Tuesday’s deadline.

State Rep. John Olumba, who recently broke from the Democratic Party to form a one-man Independent Urban Democracy Caucus in the Michigan legislature to fight for poor and disenfranchised inner city residents, is also reportedly in the hunt to succeed Mayor Bing.

On Monday, longtime educator and activist John Telford, a 77-year-old former interim superintendent of the Detroit Public Schools — and arguably the most colorful candidate in the crowded field — also threw his hat in the ring.

A former Montgomery County District Attorney now serving in his second term as a county commissioner, the 51-year-old Castor had been contemplating a gubernatorial campaign since last December when he began actively crisscrossing the state meeting with conservative activists and potential donors.

Castor, who spent the past five months depicting Corbett as a clumsy and inept politician who failed to deliver on a conservative agenda, posted his announcement on his Facebook page around 5 p.m. on Tuesday.

“After a great deal of consideration, I have decided not to run for Governor in 2014,” he told his supporters.  “I want to thank all those who encouraged and advised me over the last six months.  Simply put, my duties as Montgomery County Commissioner, a lawyer with Elliott Greenleaf, and the responsibilities to my family, make a massive undertaking such as running governor impossible for me this election cycle.”

Castor’s departure from the race caught some observers by surprise.  Just four days earlier he had posted a story about Corbett’s continuing woes on his campaign website.  Written by the refreshingly brilliant sportswriter-turned-political blogger Charles P. Pierce of Esquire, the article carried the headline, “Dead Governor Walking.”

That was precisely the kind of national publicity the GOP didn’t need, said Castor.

In contemplating a potential bid for governor, Castor had been highly critical of Gov. Corbett’s handling of the investigation of child sexual abuse charges against disgraced former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky when he was state attorney general — a post that Castor had once actively sought.  He was also critical of Corbett’s inability to get legislation through the Pennsylvania General Assembly and the governor’s disappointing failure to deliver the state to his handpicked successor for attorney general last year.

He also doubted that Corbett could be re-elected next year.

During his brief exploratory candidacy, Castor told party leaders and the press that he wanted to make sure that the GOP didn’t repeat the mistake it made in 2006 by supporting a doomed incumbent.  That year, Pennsylvania Republicans supported then-Sen. Rick Santorum’s bid for a third term.  Santorum, of course, was shellacked in the general election, losing to Democrat Robert P. Casey, Jr., by a staggering 17 percentage points.

A Public Policy Polling survey in March showed Castor trailing Corbett by only twenty points — 43 percent to 23 percent — in a head-to-head matchup.  That same poll, which showed Pennsylvania Republicans disapproving of Corbett’s job performance by a margin of 45-43 percent — and that nearly half of the state’s Republican voters preferred somebody other than Corbett as the party’s nominee next year — appeared to provide plenty of running room for an insurgent candidate like Castor.

In bowing out of the race, Castor acknowledged that defeating a sitting governor of his own party would require an almost Herculean task, telling KYW News Radio in Philadelphia that he had encountered “a solid wall of support” for Corbett among party leaders and major donors.

The time wasn’t right to buck that trend, he said.

Castor and Corbett are hardly political strangers.  Corbett defeated Castor by nearly 52,000 votes — or by less than six percentage points — to capture the Republican nomination for state attorney general in 2004.

Christie’s campaign has raised a total just shy of $6.2 million and reportedly has $3.4 million on hand as of May 3.   That total includes contributions from no fewer than 14,260 individual donors in all fifty states, though the vast majority of the governor’s contributions — some 85 percent of the total, according to his aides — were from donors within the Garden State.

State Sen. Barbara Buono, Christie’s presumptive Democratic challenger, had raised only $738,000 as of April 30, not including $1.02 million in matching funds.

At her current fundraising pace, it is unlikely that the little-known Buono will be able to raise enough money to qualify for the $2 million maximum in state matching funds for the primary — thereby becoming the only major party candidate for governor in the history of the state’s campaign matching funds program not to qualify for the maximum amount.

The blunt-spoken Christie, who accepted matching funds during his 2009 campaign, opted against public funding in this year’s primary.  He hasn’t yet indicated whether he will accept them in the general election.

Seth Grossman, Christie’s lone Republican challenger in the June 4 primary, has raised about $8,500 in his long-shot quest to unseat the popular incumbent.  Grossman’s meager total includes $1,000 raised on Sunday afternoon at a $25-person fundraiser at Caroline’s Restaurant and Bar in Somers Point.

A former city councilman and Atlantic County freeholder, Grossman told Uncovered Politics shortly before Sunday’s fundraiser that he’s “hoping to raise an equal amount for the remaining four weeks” of the campaign to help pay for yard signs, palm cards, voter lists, postage, and other basic campaign materials.

The amiable conservative acknowledges that’s not a lot of money for a major statewide race.

We just have to be frugal about things, said Grossman, a self-described “fiscal conservative” who presumably would govern in a similarly parsimonious fashion.

A caustic critic of Christie’s “crony capitalism” and profligate spending practices, the 63-year-old Grossman has been highly critical of the governor’s recent $1.2 million media buy.

Grossman says the anger and resentment of conservatives could result in a large protest vote against Christie in the primary.

“It’s all lies,” he says.

“First, Christie says he cut taxes.  But he raised state spending by 17%, put hidden taxes on our electric bills, and forced big property tax hikes in most Republican towns,” said Grossman.

“Second, Christie says he fixed the economy.  But every week, we see ‘For Sale’ and ‘For Rent’ signs and closed shops, offices, and businesses that were open the week before.

“Third, they say people are proud to live in New Jersey again— but United Van Lines says people are still moving out of New Jersey in record numbers.”

Grossman, who’s hoping for a large conservative protest vote in the primary, told Uncovered Politics that although “Christie blames whatever failures he admits to on a Democratic run legislature, his whole TV buy does nothing to encourage voters to support Republicans in the Legislature.”

The Atlantic City attorney might be on to something, quietly expressing a growing discontent and sense of frustration belied by Christie’s dizzying approval numbers.

New Jersey has the highest property taxes in the country with the average homeowner paying $7,900 in property taxes last year, making it increasingly difficult for many working-class, middle income and seniors to keep their homes.

Consequently, the state  now has the second-highest foreclosure inventory in the nation with one in every 14 homes sitting vacant (some, sadly, because the displaced homeowners couldn’t afford their rising property taxes).

While the housing market has improved slightly in most of the country, New Jersey is one of only four states where the foreclosure percentage actually climbed over the past year — something Christie’s admirers in the media fail to mention.

Under Christie’s watch, the state’s economic situation hasn’t improved much either.  In truth, his pretentious promise to usher in a full-fledged economic recovery following the “Great Recession” hasn’t really amounted to much.  It was just more hot air in a career marked by ostentatious and meaningless bluster. 

The unemployment statistics speak for themselves.

Though the state gained 8,000 jobs in March, dropping its jobless rate by a negligible three-tenths of one percent, New Jersey’s 9 percent unemployment rate remained dramatically higher than the national rate of 7.6 percent.

Only a half dozen states in the country currently have a higher rate of joblessness. 

Moreover, sixteen states had higher unemployment rates — several of them substantially higher — than the Garden State when Christie was sworn into office in January of 2010.  Ten of those states now have lower jobless rates than New Jersey.

At that rate, in another year or year-and-a-half New Jersey may lead the nation.

With 414,973 New Jerseyans currently looking for work — the real number, of course, is much higher than that — the state’s dismal 9 percent unemployment rate is only nine-tenths of a percent lower than when Christie took office. 

That’s not a lot to hang one’s hat on.

Grossman believes New Jersey can do much better.

Conducted on May 4 and 5, the poll of 1,239 likely voters in Tuesday’s special election for the state’s open 1st congressional district seat, shows the scandal-tarred Sanford leading Colbert Busch by a margin of 47 percent to 46 percent — well within the poll’s 2.8 percent margin of error.

Public Policy Polling described the race as “too close to call.”

“The special election in South Carolina couldn’t be much closer,” said Dean Debnam, president of Public Policy Polling.  “At this point it’s just a question of whether voters are more put off by Mark Sanford or the Democrats in Washington.”

The Green Party’s Eugene Platt, a longtime member of the James Island Public Service District Commission, is poised to poll the difference in the race.  Hoping to break into the low double-digits in Tuesday’s hard-fought contest, the 74-year-old Platt was favored by four percent in the poll.

According to a Public Policy Polling survey of 1,539 likely voters, the 36-year House veteran holds only a four-point lead against Republican Senate nominee Gabriel Gomez, a political neophyte.

Markey was favored by 44 percent of those polled while Gomez, a private equity financier and former U.S. Navy SEAL, was preferred by 40 percent.

Public Policy Polling is widely regarded as a Democratic-leaning polling firm.

According to the poll, which was conducted May 1-2, Markey — fresh from an 80,00-vote thrashing of fellow Congressman Stephen Lynch in Tuesday’s primary — trails the 47-year-old Gomez among independent voters by a margin of 47% to 31% and loses more than a fifth of the state’s Democratic voters to his Republican rival.

Former Sen. Scott Brown captured 64% of independents when he defeated Democratic Martha Coakley in the 2010 special election for the remainder of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s seat.

While much of Gomez’s early support could simply be a result of the bounce he received following Tuesday’s three-cornered GOP primary, this race could get interesting — and quickly.

For those who may think the poll is a fluke, another poll released earlier this week shows a similarly tight contest between the two candidates.  That poll, conducted by the Emerson College Polling Society, showed Markey with a fragile six point lead, 42% to 36%.

The challenger, Michael F. McFadden, is a co-chief executive officer of Lazard Middle Market, a division of Lazard Ltd., one of the world’s leading financial advisory and asset management firms.   According to its corporate website, Lazard Middle Market specializes in “providing premium investment banking services to mid-sized companies.”

McFadden, who graduated magna cum laude from the University of St. Thomas in the Twin Cities — a college where the late Eugene McCarthy once taught — with a degree in economics and later studied at the London School of Economics before earning a law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center, enters the race at a distinct disadvantage in terms of name recognition.

His candidacy, however, didn’t come as a complete surprise to political observers.  McFadden had told Minnesota Public Radio last month that he was “in the process of talking with my family, friends, colleagues and party leaders” about mounting a bid against Franken.

McFadden’s candidacy nevertheless is welcome news for the Minnesota GOP, which has struggled mightily to find a top-tier challenger to the freshman Democratic senator next year.

Republicans are hoping McFadden can self-finance a portion of his campaign, helping to offset Franken’s advantage in the proverbial money chase.   Franken currently has more than $2 million cash on hand, according to his latest campaign finance report filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Several other Republicans, including U.S. Rep. Erik Paulsen, state Sen. Julie Rosen and former state Rep. Laura Brod, currently a member of the University of Minnesota Board of Regents, are reportedly also looking at the race.

In a disputed race that wasn’t finally settled until June 30, 2009 — eight months after the election — Franken narrowly defeated Republican Norm Coleman by a scant 312 votes out of nearly 2.9 million votes cast in 2008.  Former Sen. Dean Barkley, the Independence Party’s nominee, polled a whopping 437,505 votes, or 15.2 percent, in that razor-thin race.

Coleman, 63, has declined to run again, believing he can have much more impact heading the American Action Network, a center-right advocacy group founded by Fred Malek, a former president of Marriott Hotels and Northwest Airlines and one-time assistant to Presidents Richard M. Nixon and George H. W. Bush.

“I will not run for Senate in 2014,” King told his followers on Twitter.  “A Senate race takes me out of urgent battles in Congress that can’t wait until 2015.  Many thanks to all.”

King’s name had immediately surfaced as a potential U.S. Senate candidate when the 73-year-old Harkin — one of the Senate’s most liberal members — announced his retirement in late January.

Regarded as one of the most conservative — not to mention zany — members of the U.S. House, the controversial six-term congressman is the second Republican to shy away from the race in the past two days and the third in the past two weeks.

On Thursday, Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey took his name out of consideration, joining Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds, who announced on April 23 that she wouldn’t be a candidate for Harkin’s Senate seat.

A close ally of Gov. Terry Branstad, the 53-year-old Reynolds is widely regarded as next in line for the GOP’s gubernatorial nomination when Branstad — the longest-serving governor in Iowa history — leaves office.

King’s decision to opt out of the race leaves the GOP momentarily without a well-known candidate in the race, although several other Republicans are reportedly looking at the race, including Secretary of State Matt Schultz, former U.S. Attorney Matt Whitaker, state Sen. Joni Ernst of Red Oak and David Young, chief of staff to Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley and a 17-year veteran of Capitol Hill.

Mark Jacobs, a former CEO of Reliant Energy who currently heads an Iowa-based education advocacy group, and nationally-syndicated conservative radio talk show host Steve Deace are also reportedly weighing bids for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination.

U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley is currently the only declared Democratic candidate in the race.

A four-term member of the U.S. House from Waterloo, Braley has already raised more than $1 million since announcing his candidacy for Harkin’s seat in February.

Widely regarded as a prohibitive favorite for the Democratic nomination, the 55-year-old Braley has already received the blessing of retiring Sen. Harkin and enjoys the support of at least fourteen labor organizations, including that of the United Steelworkers District 11, which endorsed his candidacy on Friday.

Given up for dead in the wake of his loss to Richard M. Nixon in 1968, a lack of campaign cash is probably the only thing that prevented Humphrey — one of the last Democratic presidential nominees molded in the tradition of FDR — from staging one of the most remarkable political feats in the annals of American politics.

While he had his faults, Humphrey was a Democrat’s Democrat.  Unlike the current Wall Street-occupied White House, one couldn’t possibly imagine a Humphrey Administration conceiving of the idea of a sequester or seriously contemplating — even for a nanosecond — the idea of giving the maniacally mean-spirited, Tea Party-fueled austerity peddlers in Congress precisely what they want by agreeing to put Social Security and Medicare on the table.

Following his narrow defeat in 1968, the former Vice President returned to Minnesota and accepted teaching jobs at Macalester College and the University of Minnesota, his alma mater.  He also found time to write a syndicated column and earned dozens of $2,500 speaking fees on the lecture circuit.

In addition, Humphrey served as a roving ambassador and member of the board of directors for Encyclopedia Britannica at a salary of $75,000 a year and received a $70,000 advance to write his memoirs.  Coupled with a $19,500 federal pension, Humphrey earned more than $200,000 in 1969 — more money than at any time in his life.  Always a loyal party man, he also spent a considerable amount of time as a featured speaker at DFL fund-raising events in Minnesota.

“All such rewards at this point were no more than ashes in Humphrey’s mouth,” wrote biographer Carl Solberg.  He missed public life and the thrill of politics.  After briefly flirting with the idea of running for governor of Minnesota, Humphrey eventually ran for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Eugene McCarthy in 1970.

Sporting an entirely new image, the 59-year-old Humphrey barely resembled the desperate man who frantically tried to come-from-behind against Nixon two years earlier.

Dressed in sharp William Fioravanti-tailored suits, Humphrey, who shed a dozen pounds and darkened his thinning hair a deeper black, looked like a new man.  He also had a new slogan — “You Know He Cares.”  Easily winning the DFL primary, Humphrey trounced Republican Clark MacGregor, a five-term congressman, in the general election.

Returning to the Senate, Humphrey made it clear that he had not changed.  “I’ve never been known as ‘Hubert the Silent,’” he laughed.  “I don’t intend to get a new reputation at this stage in life.”

Unlike Barry Goldwater, who retained his seniority and was given his old committee assignments when he returned to the Senate in 1969 following a four-year hiatus, Humphrey was greeted with something less than open arms when he returned to the Senate in January 1971.

In truth, his former Democratic colleagues treated him rather shabbily.

Despite sixteen years of experience in the U.S. Senate, Humphrey soon found himself ninety-third out of a hundred in the pecking order of seniority and — adding insult to injury — was denied his former seats on the Appropriations and Senate Foreign Relations committees and had to settle for the far less glamorous Government Operations and Agriculture committees.  He also ended up on the Joint Economic Committee, mostly because nobody else wanted the assignment.

Humphrey felt the Senate had changed and confided in his old friend Eugenie Anderson, a former U.S. ambassador to Denmark and Bulgaria, that it was “anything but an exhilarating and inspiring experience.”  Gone was the camaraderie and intimacy he enjoyed as Majority Whip from 1961-1964.  Gone, too, were many of the men he served with earlier, such as Georgia’s Richard Russell, the dean of the Senate, who passed away just as Humphrey was being sworn in on January 21, 1971.

Humphrey nevertheless threw himself into his work, busying himself with constituent services and introducing countless pieces of legislation, including a billion-dollar bill to eradicate cancer and a revenue-sharing measure in which the federal government would have borne all the costs of the nation’s welfare programs.  He also proposed legislation to create a National Domestic Development Bank — a bold idea that we could sorely use today — to provide capital and technical assistance to financially hard-pressed local governments.

Hoping to put the issue of the war behind him once and for all, the “Happy Warrior” also endorsed the dovish Hatfield-McGovern amendment calling for a scheduled withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Vietnam by the end of 1971.

“It maybe isn’t the best of all things,” he told a reporter at the time, “but I think that whatever reason we had to be there — and only history is going to judge whether that reason was right or wrong…but whatever the reasons, we have more than fulfilled it…I submit that national pride is meaningless if your country is torn apart.”

No longer trapped in Johnson’s shadow — a dark adumbration that most likely cost him the presidency in 1968 — Humphrey had come full circle on the war in southeast Asia.

He had also come to believe that America’s youth — many of whom had been galvanized by Gene McCarthy’s antiwar candidacy — were perhaps the most promising thing that had come out of the experience of 1968.  The kids, he said, had blown “the whistle on our use of power as the main instrument in our international affairs.”  They questioned our values and the nation’s role in the world, “and now it’s seared into our flesh.”

During his 1970 Senate campaign, Humphrey said there was little chance he would ever again be his party’s nominee for the nation’s highest office.  “I can’t imagine getting the nomination in ’72,” he said wistfully.

Yet he believed Nixon could have trouble winning a second term.  “I think Nixon is a one-term president,” he told reporters shortly after winning his Senate race.  “I realize it is difficult to unseat an incumbent president, but he is vulnerable.  In fact, I believe the only thing that will beat us [the Democrats] in 1972 will be our own mistakes.”

By the spring of 1971, it was clear that Humphrey was itching to run again.  “I’ve got the sails up.  I’m testing the waters,” he told reporters at a National Press Club breakfast on May 27.  “I’m not salivating,” he added, “but I’m occasionally licking my chops.”

A Gallup Poll released in late December 1971 unexpectedly showed Humphrey with a five-point lead over Sen. Ed Muskie of Maine, who had long been regarded as the frontrunner in the race for the party’s nomination.  That was all the encouragement he needed.

There’s no cure for Potomac fever.

Shrugging off critics who viewed him as a Democratic version of Harold Stassen, Humphrey decided to take the plunge, announcing his candidacy at the Poor Richard Club in Philadelphia — the nation’s birthplace and a favorite hangout for the city’s more affluent Democrats — on January 10, 1972.

“Persistence and tenacity are old American virtues,” he said, reminding skeptics that he had lost time and again in the past, but always managed to come back and win the second time.

Declaring that it was “taking Mr. Nixon longer to withdraw our troops than it took us to defeat Hitler,” the thrice-defeated presidential hopeful waged a vigorous campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, routinely logging eighteen-hour days.

“This is it for me.  It’s now or never,” he declared while campaigning in Florida‘s crowded primary.  “I’ve gotta go, go, go.”

True to his word, the ebullient 61-year-old former Vice President waged a campaign so vigorous that it left his aides and the reporters traveling with his campaign almost literally gasping for air.  Humphrey’s energy knew no bounds, prompting his physician and longtime political confidant, Edgar Berman, to joke that his seemingly endless stamina was “a serious genetic defect.”

While most of the other contenders in the crowded Democratic field were sloshing through the snows of New Hampshire, Humphrey made an all-out effort in Florida’s March 14 primary.  Despite an enormous personal effort — he spent far more time there than any other candidate, at one point spending 20 of 26 days there — and spending more than $1.5 million, Humphrey finished a distant second to Alabama’s George C. Wallace in that contest, netting only six of the state’s 81 delegates.

After finishing 100,000 votes behind George S. McGovern and 15,000 votes behind Wallace in the Wisconsin primary three weeks later, the indefatigable Humphrey quickly bounced back, running off a string of three straight primary victories, beginning with the Pennsylvania primary on April 25 and followed by narrow wins over McGovern in Ohio and Wallace in Indiana on May 2.

Humphrey’s margin of victory over McGovern in Ohio was a razor-thin 19,340 votes, or less than two percent of the total.  He enjoyed a somewhat more comfortable margin against Wallace, spanking the Alabama governor by 45,000 votes, or by nearly six percent, in the Hoosier State.

The double-barreled victory breathed new life into his candidacy.

His winning streak, however, came to an abrupt end only a week later, on May 9, when he was beaten by McGovern’s much better organized campaign in Nebraska — losing a hard-fought contest to the South Dakotan by a margin of 79,309 votes to 65,968.  The Minnesotan, however, salvaged some of his momentum by rolling up an impressive 67% of the vote against Wallace — still very much a symbol of white supremacy in ’72 — in a one-on-one showdown in West Virginia the same day.

Following disappointing losses in the May 16 Maryland and Michigan primaries, Humphrey’s campaign was flat broke and his advisors decided he would have to forego New York’s delegate-rich primary on June 20, where 278 delegates were at stake.  “I was furious,” Humphrey said later, “but they told me they didn’t have the money.”  As it was, Humphrey’s campaign was already more than a million dollars in debt — big money back then.

McGovern snapped Humphrey’s winning streak, slowing his momentum, with a victory in the May 9th Nebraska primary.

Then came the pivotal California primary, one of only four states with a winner-take-all primary in the great reform year of 1972.  It was the biggest prize of all.

Virtually ignoring Oregon, New Jersey and New York during the final month of the campaign, Humphrey risked all of his chips on a seemingly unlikely come-from-behind victory in California, gambling everything on a stunningly seismic upset that would’ve catapulted him into the lead heading into that summer’s Democratic convention.

Such a scenario was probably Nixon’s worst nightmare.

Believe it or not, Humphrey — though nearly penniless — was still within striking distance of winning the nomination.  Heading into the campaign’s final month, Newsweek magazine projected McGovern’s delegate count at 900 to Humphrey’s 760, with 1,509 needed to win the nomination.

For all intents and purposes, California’s 271 delegates were the whole ballgame for the former Vice President, but he desperately needed money in order to compete there.

Having already tapped out his wealthier supporters, Humphrey turned in desperation to the unions, but they too had little or nothing more to give.

It’s the Super Bowl of Democratic politics, Humphrey pleaded with I. W. Abel of the powerful Steelworkers union.  “If we win, we go on to win in Miami.  If we lose, that will be like falling in a ditch with a bulldozer filling it in.”

As in Wisconsin — where he spent only $89,500 — Humphrey was again forced to wage a frugal, low-budget campaign.  He couldn’t afford any television and even something as inexpensive and basic as producing cheap, black-and-white fliers proved to be an economic hardship in the California primary.

In the meantime, campaign treasurer Eugene Wyman, a Beverly Hills lawyer and old Humphrey friend who managed to squirrel away some $400,000 for the critical June 6 primary, was forced to send most of that money to Washington shortly before the primary to keep the candidate’s national headquarters from being padlocked.  Moreover, several checks written by Humphrey’s national office had to be covered without delay.  “Those checks, coming to approximately three hundred thousand dollars, had to be covered immediately or they would bounce,” Humphrey later recalled.

Needless to say, Humphrey’s plans for an intensive media campaign in California went up in smoke when Wyman, following his candidate’s directive, sent off $250,000 to bail out the candidate’s debt-ridden national office.  Humphrey now had little money in which to compete with McGovern’s comparatively hefty two million dollar California war chest.

With McGovern leading by double-digits in the polls, it appeared as though the race was over.  “It won’t be a convention, but a coronation,” crowed McGovern campaign manager Frank Mankiewicz.

Having exhausted his support from organized labor and lacking the resources to purchase badly-needed television advertising, Humphrey — trailing McGovern by a seemingly insurmountable twenty points in the respected California Field Poll — had to rely almost exclusively on free airtime, including three face-to-face televised debates with McGovern in which he savagely tore into his rival on everything from defense to welfare.

Refusing to abandon his lifelong dream of occupying the White House, Humphrey turned increasingly negative — and uncharacteristically mean-spirited — toward his Democratic colleague from South Dakota.  Among other things, he harshly criticized McGovern’s ill-conceived welfare proposal to provide a one-thousand-dollar income supplement to everyone in the country, charging that the “preposterous” scheme would cost the U.S. Treasury $72 billion.

“I’ll be damned if I’m giving everybody in the country a thousand-dollar bill,” shouted Humphrey, who was clearly fighting for his political life.  “People in this country want jobs, not handouts.”

McGovern was flabbergasted, never expecting to be hammered so ruthlessly by somebody he had long considered a close friend.

Humphrey’s relentless attacks on his old friend and neighbor worked as McGovern’s huge lead in the polls began to rapidly evaporate.  Unfortunately, Humphrey’s aggressive assaults on McGovern’s defense, tax and welfare proposals would come back to haunt the Democrats in the fall when the Nixon campaign gleefully exploited those very issues.

The contest in California turned out to be much closer than anybody anticipated, and it wasn’t until three o’clock in the morning of June 7 that the major television networks finally proclaimed McGovern the winner.  The fatigued and battle-worn Humphrey lost by fewer than five points, losing to McGovern by a margin of 43.5 percent to 38.6 percent.

Humphrey believed that he might have won the California primary and its 271 delegates if he had been able to raise another $150,000 for paid television — chump change in today’s ridiculously expensive and consultant-driven, post-Citizens United world.

Proving that dreams die hard, Humphrey briefly — yet somewhat shamefully — aligned himself with the last-ditch “Anybody but McGovern” movement before eventually withdrawing from the race during the Democratic national convention in Miami Beach, thereby ending his lifelong quest for the brass ring.

Excerpts from Darcy G. Richardson’s A Nation Divided: The 1968 Presidential Campaign, published in 2002.

Meet Mohammad Arif, a 43-year-old immigrant rights advocate from Bakersfield who hopes to become the first Peace & Freedom Party member of the California legislature in history.

An immigrant himself — he has was born and raised in the Punjab region of Pakistan before emigrating to the U.S. in 1991 — Mohammad Arif is no stranger to politics.  At the age of sixteen, he joined the Peoples Students Federation (PSF) and later became actively involved in the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), a center-left, democratic socialist party founded in 1967.  Long led by members of the prominent Bhutto-Zardari family, the Pakistan People’s Party is currently affiliated with the Socialist International.

Arif’s lifelong interest in politics continued after relocating to the United States and gaining his citizenship more than a dozen years ago.  In fact, he was one of 135 candidates who ran for governor of California in 2003 in the circus-like recall election that replaced incumbent Democratic Gov. Gray Davis with Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The good-natured Arif vied for the state’s highest office again in 2010, finishing third in the Peace & Freedom Party primary with 14.5 percent of the vote.  He was understandably disappointed by the outcome and believes that his candidacy that year might have been damaged by the inadvertent misspelling of his name as “Mohammed” — with an “e” instead of an “a” — in the ten million voter pamphlets mailed out by the Secretary of State.

“If you Google ‘Mohammed Arif,’” he said wistfully, “you won’t find me.  You’ll find the bad ones,” including, it just so happened, an individual by that very name who had been recently convicted of waging jihadist attacks in western India under that country’s Prevention Of Terrorism Act.

It was one of the first names that popped up in a Google search.

Arif is hoping he’ll have better luck in this election.  At least the Secretary of State’s office spelled his name right this time.

The affable Arif, who earned a Master’s Degree in Economics from Punjab University in Lahore, Pakistan, and later studied law in the United States, refrains from publicly criticizing his opponents, focusing instead on his own background and attributes, stressing that he has much more in common with the district’s struggling residents than either Perez — a protégé of disgraced former State Sen. Michael Rubio — or Vidak, the lone Republican in the race, both of whom are considered ahead of the pack in the five-candidate field.

He even refuses to criticize Perez, the presumed frontrunner, for running for the seat only three months after being sworn in to her first term as a Kern County Supervisor.  He also preferred not to comment on the fact that Perez had to change her residency just to qualify for the race.

“Both major parties are only interested in obtaining power,” he said.  “They’ll do whatever it takes to achieve it.”

The Peace & Freedom candidate and founder of United Moderate Muslims of America for Peace — a national organization he helped to launch this past year — is more concerned with the substantive issues facing the district.

“I want to represent the working class, not the tiny wealthy minority who fund campaigns,” said Arif, who’s fluent in several languages and conversant in several others.  “I am an immigrant, like many residents of this district.  I have known hard times, like most of the people in the San Joaquin Valley.  And I want to help bring peace to our people, equality and respect for people of all religions and backgrounds, and unite people rather than divide them.”

In a recent interview, the Peace & Freedom aspirant told Uncovered Politics that he wants to be “the voice for the downtrodden and the impoverished in Sacramento.  I want to fight for them.  I’ll be a one-man lobby for poor and working people in the legislature.”

Reminiscent of muckraking author Upton Sinclair’s EPIC (End Poverty in California) movement during the Great Depression — a crusade that nearly carried the plucky, lifelong Socialist into the governor’s mansion — one of Arif’s four campaign cards includes Sinclair’s famous slogan.

If elected, he said that he’ll use 75 percent of his legislative salary to create a non-profit foundation to help poverty-stricken residents of his district, providing legal assistance, temporary shelter, and drug treatment for the chronically unemployed, the homeless, victims of domestic violence and others who are simply down on their luck.

“Everything I do,” he said modestly, “comes from my heart.”

The lawmakers in Sacramento — Republicans and so-called “business-friendly” Democrats alike — have it completely wrong, he says.  “They’re beholden to the rich and powerful who fund their campaigns.  Everybody knows it.  The role of government should be to protect those who need protection, to be a power for the powerless, to restrain those who, when they are not restrained, prey upon the weak.”

In addition to calling for higher taxes on the wealthy while trimming taxes and “user fees” that hit poor and working-class people the hardest, Arif’s platform — mirroring that of his time-honored party — calls for higher wages, including a sharp increase in the minimum wage, which, contrary to what conservative economists at the Heritage Foundation or the libertarian Cato Institute and those employed by major corporations claim, would actually help create jobs.  

Arif believes the state’s current $8.00 minimum wage should be closer to $16 per hour. 

The Peace & Freedom candidate also maintains that infrastructure improvements are the quickest and most effective way to create jobs and stimulate California’s sagging economy.  As of March, California’s official jobless rate stood at 9.4 percent — the fourth-highest in the nation and well above the national unemployment rate of 7.6 percent.

“We have thousands of bridges, water lines, and other basic units of our infrastructure that need immediate replacement or repair, and we need to build much more advanced city and rural communications and transportation systems as soon as possible,” he said, citing the recent report by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) estimating that the U.S. needs at least $3.6 trillion in infrastructure investment by 2020 to maintain a passing grade.

According to the ASCE’s 2013 Report Card, which gave the U.S. a less-than-stellar D+ grade, California alone has a staggering 2,978 (12%) structurally deficient bridges and another 4,178 (16.8%) that are considered “functionally obsolete,” while 68% of the state’s roads and highways are in “poor or mediocre condition.”  Moreover, the ASCE estimates that the state will need to spend $39 billion in drinking water infrastructure improvements over the next twenty years and projects an additional $29 billion in wastewater infrastructure needs.

There’s a lot of work to be done, said Arif, arguably the most pro-labor candidate in the race — the recent endorsement of Perez by the powerful SEIU (Service Employees International Union) of California notwithstanding.

“Both nationally and at the state level, we need to develop full-employment policies that should lead to a shorter workweek with no cut in pay, and more vacation time for all workers,” he added.

“Mohammad Arif is getting the Peace and Freedom Party message across to tens of thousands of voters from Fresno to Bakersfield,” says party chairman Kevin Akin.

Peace & Freedom Party leaders are encouraged by the progress of Arif’s long-shot candidacy. 

“As Arif gathered his signatures as a Peace and Freedom Party candidate, the official Democratic Party apparatus decided to support a candidate whose mentor was the disgraced former senator.  Arif found himself suddenly popular, and a local paper covering the first debate called Mohammad Arif the ‘crowd favorite,’” said Kevin Akin, the party’s state chair.

“With support from many immigrants, and a good reaction to his campaign from working people in general, Mohammad Arif is getting the Peace and Freedom Party message across to tens of thousands of voters from Fresno to Bakersfield.”

Despite being vastly outspent by his two leading opponents — as of two weeks ago, Perez had raised $429,900, including $320,000 from the California Democratic Central Committee, while Vidak reported receiving a not-too-skimpy $323,407 — Arif insists that his bare-bones campaign, relying exclusively on small contributions, will make up the difference in shoe leather and sweat equity.

“I’ve been campaigning 70 hours a week, visiting every neighborhood in the district,” he said, adding that he has probably met and spoken with more residents of the sprawling district than all of the other candidates combined.  “I’m campaigning seven days a week, morning ‘til night,” he said with a hint of pride in his voice.

“It’s been exhausting,” he continued, “but I will work just as diligently as a State Senator.  I plan to be the hardest working and most accessible public servant possible.”

That would be a nice change for the underrepresented and ill-served residents of the district.

“This district was cheated of real representation in the past by a state senator who actually represented Chevron,” said Arif in a reference to ex-State Senator Michael Rubio of Shafter, who abruptly resigned from office in February to accept a government affairs job with Chevron Corp., thereby leaving the district unrepresented in Sacramento and temporarily denying the Democrats a super-majority in the State Senate.

Rubio, once seen as a rising star in California politics, was chairman of the Senate Environmental Quality Committee at the time of his resignation.

Unfailingly polite and courteous and armed with a dry, self-deprecating sense of humor and the determination of a man committed heart and soul to a greater cause — the cause of “humanity,” as he says repeatedly, meaning a better life for impoverished and working-class Californians — the hefty Peace & Freedom candidate continues to pound the pavement in search of votes as the campaign enters the homestretch.

“I’m running to lose my weight,” he jokes, “and I’m running to win my race.”

Echoing a similar remark by comedienne Roseanne Barr, the party’s 2012 presidential candidate, Arif also said that he plans to “keep running until I win,” whether it’s this year, next year — or in 2018.

The May 21 special election is being conducted in the old 16th Senate District, using the same boundaries that were in place when Rubio was elected in 2010, before the most recent redistricting of the state legislative boundaries.  The district includes all of Kings County, about half of Fresno County, the western portion of Tulare County, and a western portion of Kern County, including part of Bakersfield where Arif resides.

Lynch, who also forecast a 23 percent turnout in the primary, made his prediction while speaking with a Boston Globe reporter on Friday during a commute to Norwood where he was scheduled to make several campaign appearances.

Buoyed by what he sees as a late surge in support in some of the state’s medium-sized cities, including New Bedford, Fall River, Everett and Lawrence, the 58-year-old pro-union lawmaker — a former ironworker-turned-lawyer now serving in his seventh term in the U.S. House of Representatives — boldly predicted that he would defeat his heavily-favored Democratic rival by five percentage points.

A Public Policy Polling survey released Thursday showed Markey, a 37-year House veteran, with a commanding 14-point lead over Lynch — 50 percent to 36 percent.   A poll released last week by WNEU/MassLive.com/WSHM put the margin at 10 percent.  The WNEU poll, conducted between April 11-18, showed 23 percent of likely primary voters were still undecided.

Lynch’s own internal polling reportedly shows the race much closer than that.  Bolstered by strong support in working-class neighborhoods and signs of growing support among independent voters, he believes he has a sporting chance to pull off an upset on Tuesday.

Lynch, who is being vastly outspent by Markey — raising less than half the $4,759,928 reported by his opponent as of April 10, according to the latest FEC filings — has made jobs and infrastructure a major focus of his campaign.

“I think that we have allowed a lot of our core infrastructure — roads, bridges, rail systems — really to deteriorate,” says Lynch, who was raised in a public housing project in South Boston.   “That used to be a point of pride and competitive advantage for the United States and I think we’ve let that fall away.  Ironically, I think that’s exactly what we need right now is to focus on putting people back to work.   I don’t think there’s a partisan way of looking at a bridge or a road…”

The winner of the widely-watched Lynch-Markey race will face the winner of Tuesday’s Republican primary between private equity financier and former Navy SEAL Gabriel E. Gomez, former U.S. Attorney Michael J. Sullivan, and state Representative Daniel P. Winslow.